Archive for the ‘Maslow’ Category

IT’S UNFORTUNATE unfortunate and ironic that pioneer humanistic psychologist and the founder of positive psychology Abraham Maslow is today best known for his hierarchy of needs. The hierarchy will be familiar to most readers as the pyramid diagram found in all introductory psychology texts which places lower human needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) above higher needs like those for social affiliation and self-actualization.

It’s unfortunate because many people understandably balk at the suggestion that we have to have all material needs met before we can concern ourselves with being moral. Ironic, because such a notion is far indeed from Maslow’s own beliefs and message.

To begin, then, let’s clear this up. First, Maslow never used the pyramid diagram in any of his writings; this is an addition of later textbook writers.

Second, he didn’t intend the ‘hierarchy’ as an excuse for selfishness or delaying pursuit of higher needs; rather, he noted with considerable interest that there are people, like great reformers and saints, who are remarkable precisely because they subordinated material to altruism — and he implied that we all ought to emulate their example. In other words, to the extent this hierarchy does exist, it is the condition of the fallen human race, and not how we should like it to remain.

Third, that people have basic drives for material needs is hardly a surprising or original suggestion; the innovation of Maslow’s system is precisely that it includes higher needs at all — something surprisingly few psychologists were willing to admit when Maslow wrote.

Finally, Maslow proposed the hierarchy of needs relatively early in his career; over time he moved decisively towards a focus on higher needs; it is this emphasis which is clearly his greatest legacy.

Yet today, decades later, his legacy remains dimly understood and barely appreciated. There are several reasons for this, including the emergence of a kind of pseudo-positive psychology that in the 1990’s, using Maslow’s term yet ignoring him and his work. But another reason is perhaps the regrettable tendency of human beings to latch onto a simplistic idea like a pyramid diagram and then rest there in the pretension of knowing something real and solid.

Rather than berate human folly (they very problem we’re trying to fix), let’s fight fire with fire. That is, if we need a diagram to get a concept across, let’s supply a better one that expresses Maslow’s thought. I propose on below.

The point is to give visual expression to Maslow’s real contribution, which is what he called Being psychology. We can define Being-psychology in a number of ways. At one level, it’s the psychology behind all the great religions and philosophies of the world — the perennial psychology. It involves a transcendence of egoism and the inauthentic world of ‘seeming,’ and stepping into the reality of here and now fully alive: being fully in the world whilst simultaneously connected with the great Ideals of Truth, Beauty, Harmony, Love and Goodness. It is the psychology peak experiences, flow states, aesthetics, fulfillment, love and harmony.

Defined negatively, it is concerned with life free from anxieties, doubts, fears, anger and the other forms of negative cognition that oppose happy and fulfilling existence. In short, Being-psychology is the psychology of life as we wish it to be; it is the aim of our life, what we strive for.

In future articles I’ll explain more about Being-psychology. Here I simply wish to comment on its significance for the modern world and relevance to contemporary research. One of the great merits of Maslow’s psychology — how it goes beyond traditional formulations of the perennial psychology like religion, Platonic Idealism and Transcendentalism — is that it is completely naturalistic. Maslow, in fact, was more less an atheist. Yet he was convinced that all the great psychological and ethical teachings of the world’s religions are grounded in absolute truths of human nature. He believed we are biologically designed and intended (perhaps by an intelligent universe) to be Idealists. And unless we express this side of our nature we cannot be true to ourselves or attain to any great measure of happiness.

While not especially systematic in this thinking, Maslow was nonetheless extremely rationalistic, scientific and empirical. His humanistic theories originated from analysis of answers to surveys and interviews he conducted. Throughout his works he proposes practical testable hypotheses. This empirical orientation means that Being-psychology supplies a bridge between science and religion. Maslow also considered the practical applications of Being-psychology and was especially concerned with applying it in industrial settings to improve worker satisfaction, morale and productivity.

Here then is a new way to look at Maslow’s theory: at the center of Philosophy, Religion, Science, and Culture, connecting them, and enabling ideas and discoveries to flow from one area to the others. Let this much, then, serve as food for though and as an introduction to further posts.

DIGGING into the writings of pioneer humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow it’s become clear that his Being-psychology — that is, his intensive investigation into the nature of self-actualizing people, and of peak and plateau experiences — was strongly influenced by Platonism This has several important implications, and these will be addressed in subsequent articles. The aim of this post is merely to document the connection using actual quotations from Maslow’s works, and hopefully to whet the appetite of Maslow fans for more.

As will be discussed later, this means we have two road-maps: Maslow’s and Plato’s, of the same terrain, and that’s very advantageous.

While Maslow was certainly influenced by Eastern spiritual traditions (e.g., Taoism and Zen Buddhism), careful attention to his works reveals an even stronger influence by Plato and the western philosophical tradition. That this connection hasn’t gained much notice is probably due, at least in part, to the fact that few psychologists read Plato. We need to fix that!

Note: sources are indicated with a two-letter acronym (see Bibliography for full title.)

I remember rereading Plato’s Republic, in which he stated that the ultimate good involves the contemplation of the ultimate values. What was so amazing was that I had found men and women in everyday life who were embracing, actually living, these ultimate values through their particular activities. {Abraham Maslow, UP 90-91}

For my theory is implying that in a certain sense, every newborn baby is a potential Plato. Every child has an instinctive need for the highest values of beauty, truth, justice, and so on. {Abraham Maslow, UP 95}

March 2, 1965. (Still sick at home with flu, etc.) Reading Republic. Socrates in Book IX talking about “the lawless, wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.” “Then the wild beast within us — goes forth to satisfy his desires, & there is no conceivable folly or crime … not excepting incest, or any other unnatural union, or parricide, or the eating of forbidden food … which at such a time, when he has parted company with all shame & sense, a man may not be ready to commit.” Reminds me that I’ve never really worked up the relations of the Freudian id & the real self. It’s OK to reject neurosis on grounds that it is the rejection of real self. But this can’t be true for our wishes of sleep. My assumption is that these lawless wishes (absolutely selfish & undesirable in any society, especially since they include whatever happens to be locally forbidden too, like the ”forbidden food” above ) exist in the healthiest people too, & that therefore they are part of the real self, not external to it. They’re just controlled, or laughed at, or shrugged away, & don’t constitute a serious temptation to the mature person. {Abraham Maslow, JA 125}

November 9, 1968. Then ask: why does truth heal? But is this the same as asking: why does beauty heal? (Or any other B-value?) Is this the same as Socrates & Plato talking about contemplation of the B-values as the ultimate happiness, the highest activity of man, etc.? {Abraham Maslow, JA 274}

January 14, 1970. Good extension of B-art, unitive cognition, etc. B. [Bertha, Maslow’s wife] complains that J. her teacher keeps trying to make her sculpture less realistic & representational. I was going to suggest calling it “magical realism,” & then I thought “symbol realism” or “unitive realism” would be better. It’s the difference between reduced-to-the-concrete realism & the portrait which is of a particular person, like the head of Ellen, & yet is also universal, & of a universal, of a B-symbol, i.e., of the Young Girl, any young girl seen Platonically, as in the B-analysis of male & female. Jeannie is a particular baby, but she is also Babyhood, the representative of a whole dais, of a Platonic idea. [J 1221 (= CL 245f.)]

I live so much in my private world of Platonic essences, having all sorts of conversations with Plato & Socrates and trying to convince Spinoza and Bergson of things & getting mad at Locke and Hobbes, that I only appear to others to be living in the world. {Abraham Maslow, FR (Preface), xx-xxi}

Any reader of Zen, Taoistic, or mystical literatures knows what I am talking about. Every mystic has tried to describe this vividness and particularity of the concrete object and, at the same time, its eternal, sacred, symbolic quality (like a Platonic essence). {Abraham Maslow, FR 111}

We must make a new vocabulary for all these untilled, these unworked problems. This “cognition of being” means really the cognition that Plato and Socrates were talking about; almost, you could say. a technology of happiness, of pure excellence, pure truth, pure goodness, and so on. Well, why not a technology of joy. of happiness? {Abraham Maslow, FR 169}

These in turn are good paths (not guaranteed, but statistically likely to be good paths) to the “cognition of being,” to the perceiving of the Platonic essences, the intrinsic values, the ultimate values of being, which in turn is a therapeutic-like help toward both the curing-of-sicknesses kind of therapy and also the growth toward self-actualization, the growth toward full humanness. {Abrham Maslow, FR 170}

If B-Values are as necessary as vitamins and love, and if their absence can make you sick, then what people have talked about for thousands of years as the religious or platonic or rational life seems to be a very basic part of human nature. {Abraham Maslow, FR 186}

I became a symbol; I stood for something outside my own skin. I was not exactly an individual. I was also a “role” of the eternal teacher. I was the Platonic essence of the teacher. {Abraham Maslow, FR 260}

After the insight or the great conversion, or the great mystic experience, or the great illumination, or the great full awakening, one can calm down as the novelty disappears, and as one gets used to good things or even great things, live casually in heaven and be on easy terms with the eternal and the infinite. To have got over being surprised and startled and to live calmly and serenely among the Platonic essences, or among the B-Values. {Abraham Maslow, FR 265}

The unitive perception is one in which — as I think the Zen people may have described it best — you sacralize the ordinary. I don’t know if that carries meaningfulness with it. In the person, preferably, but in a flower and tree — in anything — you can see its Platonic essence at the same time that you see it as itself, in the concrete sense. {Abraham Maslow, CL 226}